Brussels, 11/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 11 December, the budgets committee at the European Parliament discussed the result, generally described as disappointing, of the negotiations on the 2015 budget and the amending budgets for 2014. The final vote of this committee on this budgetary package will be held on Monday 15 December, at an extraordinary meeting in Strasbourg.
Gérard Deprez (ALDE, Belgium), rapporteur on the amending budgets for 2014, said that he was “disappointed with the result”, but intended to look on the bright side: “the 2014, we were asking for €4.7 billion euros in fresh money. We got €3.5 billion, which means that we got 68% of what we were asking for. To start with the Council was giving us zero”. Adding the other operations, there is €4.2 billion in 2014 which can be allocated to lines on which there are urgent payment requirements. The debate will essentially focus, he said, on the “operational plan for debt clearance”. Steep demands by the Parliament, which were ultimately accepted by the Council.
If we had not had a compromise, the €5 billion euros which came in from fines would not have been allocated to paying the bills, but would have been pocketed by the member states, Jean Arthuis (ALDE, France), the chair of the budgets committee, pointed out. He added that the Parliament had obtained €3.5 billion in 2014 and €1.2 billion in 2015, or nearly €4.8 billion to pay the most urgent bills.
José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Spain) showed the most enthusiasm, describing it as a “good agreement” on the amending budgets for 2014. “We avoided failure on the budget”, he said. He argued that the plan to stagger the payments should not call the whole of the multi-annual financial framework 2014-2020 (MFF) into question. Jens Geier (S&D, Germany) was considerably more critical. €3.5 billion, “it's not enough to avoid mountains of bills”, he said. The situation is unclear for the special instruments (e.g. the solidarity fund and flexibility instrument). He said that “such a tight budget will cause problems”. He called upon the Commission to provide a table on the way the debts (unpaid bills) are being divided up between the countries. Monika Vana (Greens/EFA, Austria), who is “very disappointed”, announced that her group was to vote against the budgetary package, which is “not a good compromise”.
The representative of the Commission said that the agreement was “well balanced”. We have to honour our commitments and the programmes need to be implemented, but “every euro counts”, she added. The budgetary package will make it possible to stabilise and reduce the unpaid bills from 2015, the Commission states. In early 2015, the Commission is to present a plan to stagger the payments. It will also redirect the unabsorbed structural funds and examine the budgetary effects of the major investment plan, put at €16 billion in guarantees drawn from the EU budget.
The budget package will be formally adopted by the Council of the EU on Friday 12 December. The Parliament will adopt it at its plenary session of 17 December. (LC)